The Effect of Women’s Incarceration on the Fertility Rate

Various factors, such as income and education, have been adduced to explicate the decline in fertility in the U.S. One underexplored factor potentially contributing to the decrease in fertility is the women’s incarceration rate. Not only has the women’s incarceration rate risen in recent decades, but women tend to be confined during their reproductive years. The results generated in a two-way fixed-effects panel model using four decades of state data show a positive rather than a negative association between the incarceration of women and the fertility rate. This finding contradicts prevailing assumptions about the disruptive effects of imprisonment on reproduction.